


Child of Air, Child of Earth

by Kammy



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Eventual Touriko, F/F, Fairies, Modern Fairytale AU, TG Lady Appreciation Week, but fairies that are more like spirits, fairy!Yoriko, human!Touka, slight touken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kammy/pseuds/Kammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Touka never even considered a world without weight, but Yoriko flies like someone who never understood the concept of gravity. And for a while, she made Touka feel like she could fly too.</p><p>(Or, an AU where Touka is human, Yoriko is a fairy, and both must disappear to each other forever the day they turn eighteen.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Contains sad lesbians. I'm sorry.
> 
> So, I was going to write something else for Touka day of TG Lady Appreciation week, something without pairings, but I ended up writing this instead. Because I am touriko trash. This will be three chapters long, so it will take up three days of the week.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

They were called fairies, but they weren’t like the fairies Touka had seen in picture books. Those fairies were tiny and solid, tinier even than Touka’s six-year-old baby hand and just as fleshy. Those fairies had wings sprouting from their backs, butterfly wings just like any you could see perched on the windowsill. They weren’t real, but if they had been, they would have had a realness to them. Not like the fairies that actually existed, weirdly enough.

Maybe that’s why, when she’d first seen Yoriko in a faint flash of the corner of her eye she’d thought she was a ghost, not a fairy. She still remembered that night sharply. Their father had been gone for days, and the air from the fridge was turning rancid. She and Ayato had eaten peanut-butter and jelly for the third time that day, finishing off the loaf of bread before going to sleep. They were both still hungry. Ayato didn’t say so and she didn’t say so but she knew she was and she saw Ayato clutching his stomach when he thought she wasn’t looking.

She’d woken up in the middle of the night to pace around the apartment. That was when she saw Yoriko—though she didn’t know her name then—right as she was turning. The second she saw her, she snatched the nearest object she could find and flung it in the direction of the person-shaped blur in the corner.

It vanished. In the other room, Ayato woke up.

“Touka? What are you doing?”

She narrowed her eyes at the space, and then turned back and went to her room.

“It’s nothing. I thought I saw a bug, that’s all,” she said, “Go back to sleep.”

The next few days, Touka decided it was a ghost and that they were being haunted. So many times she could have sworn she saw it, only for the figure to vanish the moment she whirled to look at it. So many times she heard it—not breathing, like a human would, but humming faintly like the air-conditioner did. Only its little hum was softer and more musical, like a long, tiny note on the violin.

It wasn’t until they were completely out of food that she saw Yoriko properly. Ayato was asleep then, passed out from boredom and hunger. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the apartment was dark, except for slivers of light beaming from between the blinds. When Yoriko moved out from the lit up area on the carpet, Touka thought it was the light drifting toward her. When she saw the pale figure inch closer though, not touching the floor, she shrank back a moment.

The figure—a transparent, pale girl—leaned forward until her and Touka’s faces were only a few inches apart. Touka swatted at her, or tried to. Her hand went right through.

“Ghost,” she mumbled, drawing back and clutching her covers.

“I’m not a ghost. My name is Yoriko. I think you would call me a fairy?”

“Stop haunting us. Go back to hell,” Touka said, her voice raising.

Yoriko looked hurt. She drew back, moving fluidly through the air. “Haunting?”

“You’re bugging me,” she told her, “I thought I was really turning crazy.”

“Oh,” Yoriko said. “Well you’re not. My mother said some human children can see us. They usually forget but…”

Touka groaned, cutting her off by flipping over and burying her head in her sweaty pillow. “I don’t care! I don’t care about any of that, or you.” She added mournfully, “I don’t care about anything, unless it gets me food.”

Yoriko was quiet for a moment. “Humans die without food, right?” she asked.

“Seriously, go back to hell.”

“I think I know where you can get food, though,” Yoriko told her, “Follow me.”

Touka turned back over. She frowned. “No, you’re definitely tricking me. Why don’t you get it yourself?”

“I can’t touch anything in this world,” Yoriko said, moving her hands through the floor to demonstrate. “See?”

Touka frowned. “I’m too tired.”

“Come on, please,” Yoriko said.

“No.”

But somehow, with both the strange ghostlike girl and her own stomach pleading with her, Touka actually got up and followed Yoriko outside the apartment and into the light, where the girl nearly vanished in the sun the way a black cat would vanish into the night.

“Follow my voice if it’s hard to see me,” Yoriko said, “It’s this way.”

An hour later, Touka brought home an armful of groceries and she and Ayato stuffed themselves until their stomachs were ready to burst. Yoriko vanished before Ayato could see her, but as she did, Touka could see a smile on her face.

“I’d like to be friends,” she confided later that night as Touka drifted off to sleep. “Do you mind if I stay around and help you awhile?”

* * *

Touka decided that Yoriko was an angel, maybe her guardian angel. But Yoriko had never heard of angels, or devils, or God. She blinked confusedly when Touka told her about all those things, eventually shaking her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ve never seen an angel or anything—I don’t know if those exist. I don’t know about a god either. Some of my people believe something like that, a mother of the universe, but not a lot of people I know do. My mother said that when humans interacted with us in the old days, they called us fairies. But it’s been a long time since then.”

Touka squinted at her. Yoriko looked about the same age as Touka—was the same age, according to her—and she was just as tall. She also didn’t have butterfly wings, or any wings at all. “You don’t look like a fairy though.”

Yoriko tilted her head. “I don’t understand. What are we supposed to look like?”

Touka pulled out a picture book, and a long nighttime talk about how fairies were different from in the books ensued. Fairies weren’t smaller than humans. They weren’t limited to living in forests. They could fly, but they didn’t need wings. They didn’t have magic, either, but humans sometimes mistook the colorful flashes of the fairy world they saw for some sort of enchantment.

“The only people who can do magic are witches—I don’t know how witches are related to humans or fairies, though,” she said. “They seem to be able to live in either world.”

Yoriko referred to the realm of the fairies as “her world” and the realm of humans as “the human world” like they were entirely different places you had to fly through space to get to. That wasn’t quite true, Touka found out. Yoriko’s fairy world was all around them, occupying the same space as the human world and yet never interacting because the objects in it were intangible to each other.

“So, do they have houses and stuff in the exact same places as we do?” Touka frowned, “Is our apartment a fairy apartment too? With fairy kids?”

“No,” Yoriko giggled as though that were the funniest thing in the world all, “They don’t line up perfectly like that—so no one lives in your place.”

Yoriko paused for a moment. Then, her arms flailed and Touka could see the spark of an idea light up her eyes, “Here! Outside, let me show you!”

“Wha–? Okay.”

She followed Yoriko. Against the night sky Yoriko seemed to glow like one of the city lights, her bright hue glimmering against the darkness. She looked almost exactly like a human, but her limbs didn’t move the same: instead of going up, down and around at the right joints they wavered and fluttered bonelessly in a motion that reminded Touka of a fish’s fins in the water. She swirled and danced, never touching the floor. Touka looked at her, and suddenly felt conscious of the weight on her knees and the slouch of her shoulders. She was heavy, constantly pulled to the ground—but Yoriko wasn’t.

“Look!” Yoriko said, reaching out her arms to point, “That’s a couple dancing up there. There’s a party going on—can you see it?”

Touka squinted, and saw two faint beams swirling around each other above what looked like moonlit mist in the distance. As she looked she could see ghostly figures within it, people like Yoriko who smiled and laughed and flew and danced.

“Here, here!” Yoriko said, “Let me show you more!”

So she flew ahead, taking Touka into the fairy dance, introducing her to fairies who tilted their heads and didn’t see her, but who smiled and told Yoriko she was a lovely, imaginative child. Touka watched, eyes wide as she let each moment sink in.

“Let’s dance too,” Yoriko said.

“I can’t hold you, though.”

“You don’t have to. Just follow me,” Yoriko moved in rhythm to the fairies around her, “Just like this.”

Touka moved awkwardly, never fast enough to keep up but determined to keep at it nonetheless. Yoriko was close, close enough that Touka’s eyes ached at her brightness. But she didn’t look away or close her eyes. Instead, she looked closer until she could see the bits of sky behind Yoriko’s see-through form, and but found her cheeks heating up and her lips pulling into a smile.

“I can’t believe how much of you guys are right there all the time,” Touka said, inhaling the night air on the way back, “I’m not even seeing all of it, am I? You guys are just… so see-through.”

Yoriko laughed, fluttering closer to her in the air, “Well to me you look see-through. I guess our worlds are mostly invisible to each other. Not a lot of us can see you all, just like not a lot of you can see us fairies. And even then…”

Touka didn’t like the melancholy note in Yoriko’s voice as she trailed off. “Even then what?”

“Well… no matter how good you are at seeing the other world, you lose the ability when you turn eighteen,” Yoriko said, voice quiet. “Then humans disappear completely to fairies, and fairies to humans.”

Touka frowned. “That’s not fair.”

“No…”

For a moment, they didn’t look at each other. All Touka could hear was the faint hum of Yoriko’s presence, and the cicadas screeching faintly in the night air.

“I bet it’s not true,” she said, finally, “There has to be some people who can keep on seeing both. Anyway, that’s a long time from now.”

Yoriko nodded. “Yeah.”

Touka wanted to ask if they’d be friends for the rest of their time, but instead she put her hands in her pockets and stared up at the night sky. Two faint glows—fairies—twirled around the moon.

* * *

For the next few years, Yoriko came back almost every day to talk or help her get food or money. Yoriko soon became obsessed with the stuff, mooning over the brightly colored cookies they saw in the store or the elaborate, layered cheesecake at the dessert shop. She would whine at Touka to get more and more fancy meals.

“Can’t you eat your own?” Touka asked.

“No, we don’t eat,” Yoriko told her, “We don’t have to and we don’t have anything like food.”

“Then stop acting so obsessed.”

Yoriko whined again, flipping in circles in the air. That was something she could do: fly, float, and dance through the air like she didn’t have a single concern for gravity. “But food is so pretty sometimes. I’m jealous. And it makes you smile so nicely—I want to understand why.” She paused, eyes suddenly shining with tenderness, “I want to make you smile like that too.”

Touka flushed. “Well… there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Yoriko pouted, “You won’t smile for me?”

“No! I mean about the food.”

Yoriko also wanted to know what touching someone was like. Fairies couldn’t touch humans, as she had said, but Touka found out they didn’t touch each other either. At least, not the way humans did.

“You are always bumping against each other,” Yoriko said, “But you do so much with it. I want to know what it feels like.”

“You guys never touch each other? At all? That’s… lonely.”

“Well,” Yoriko frowned, “I don’t know. We interact in other ways. We meld sometimes, but that’s a bit different. It’s like a sharing of feelings and stuff. I don’t know how to explain it. You can reach someone else, but there isn’t any of that bumping I see you and other humans do.”

“Bumping, huh?” Touka mused, “So, you don’t bump each other. You meld… I wonder what that feels like.”

Yoriko stilled for a moment, brow furrowing.

“We’ll never know, huh?” she said. “We won’t get to experience things the same way. I really wish I could pick things up and move things around. Then I could help you out more. I’d like to brush your hair, too, like those people on the movie you showed me.”

Touka scrunched her nose. “Well, I guess that’d be nice.”

Time passed. For a while Touka’s life was half Ayato and half Yoriko. Ayato was the brother she looked out for and loved, who she taught to read and roughhoused with, touched, and tucked in to say goodnight. Yoriko was her friend, her guide, her guardian angel, though not really. The two of them schemed to get food for Ayato in the day and stayed up late at night so Touka could see Yoriko’s eyes glisten as she talked about weird things like how she wanted to take Touka flying with her or show her the depths of the ocean. She would open books and read them to Yoriko and put movies on for her as Touka fell to sleep.

Then, one day, someone realized that two kids were living alone on the streets, and she and Ayato were taken into foster care. Not long after, they were separated, and no matter how much Touka kicked and bit at the adults involved, they wouldn’t bring Ayato back to her.

“Hey, Yoriko?” Touka asked on night in the strange, musty room they put her in, her lip trembling, “In the fairy world, you’re never hungry, right?”

“No,” Yoriko said quietly.

“And people don’t kill each other, right?” she frowned, “They don’t kill people’s dads and stuff.”

“It’s too hard to kill people in our world,” Yoriko said, sounding faint, “I’ve hardly ever heard of it happening.”

Her lip trembled. “And they don’t take people’s brothers away?”

“We don’t live with our parents and siblings long,” she said, “We don’t have a lot of things that kill us, so we don’t need so much protection, I think. But… no one ever makes it so we can’t see our families again. I’ve never known that to happen.”

Touka’s fist tightened in her blankets. “Well I wish I’d been born in your world instead.”

And then she cried. Yoriko didn’t respond, but when Touka turned her hands were reaching over her, as though to stroke her hair reassuringly. Her face was scrunched too, like she was about to cry as well.

Touka only cried more, burying her face in her pillow.

“It’s okay,” Yoriko told her. But she didn’t sound calm or reassuring: her voice was squeaky and shaky. “It’s okay. You have me and they can’t take me away. You’ll always have me.”

But one day, Yoriko was no longer there to whisper to her as she fell asleep. She left, mumbling something about being back soon, only for the absence to turn from a week into a year. Touka had to sit in her room one lonely night and then rage and cry and tear everything apart, because it had been too long and Yoriko wouldn’t come back. Not after she’d been gone so long.

And then, months after that, it wouldn’t even matter.

Dad was gone. Ayato was gone. Yoriko was gone. But Touka survived anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: still sad lesbians (though more accurately, one sad lesbian and one sad bisexual)
> 
> So, there's some minor, minor touken in this. I didn't tag it because I decided it was too light, and I didn't want fans of the ship to click on this and hope for something more. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy the story anyway!

She decided that Yoriko had never existed except as an imaginary friend, and that the ghostly figures she saw were nothing but hallucinations. Then, slowly, the details of everything before started to blur until the memories that surfaced seemed like something from a dream.

Four years later, and more foster homes than she’s cared to count, and she’d become a thug. Not that she minded the description. She could beat someone down for looking her in the eye the wrong way: she had on several occasions, in fact, and she loved it (hated it). She’d picked up enough skills from her childhood to know instinctively the right times to sneak into places to steal money, exactly how to avoid security cameras and prying eyes. She’d had to fight of other foster kids and parents who threw things at her and tried to hit her. She’d run away enough times to find Ayato that she knew her way around Tokyo.

Finally, she transferred to Yoshimura’s place. Yoshimura, who was the most annoying kind old man she’d ever met. Yoshimura, who they said had been a big-time Yakuza hit-man back in his day. Who apparently still had enemies gunning for his destruction.

It was there she met Kaneki. Dumb, wide-eyed Kaneki who transferred to her current foster home.

Kaneki, who could see _them._

“Holy shit,” she said, once he’d convinced her it wasn’t some prank and she’d refrained from breaking his arms in retaliation. “Fuck. _Fuck_. I thought I was the only one. I thought I was batshit crazy.”

Kaneki grimaced. “It’s hard to find people with the gift, I suppose.”

The reality of her childhood dreams threatened to break from the darkness of her memory like water through a dam. Somehow, though, she managed to shove all thoughts of Yoriko down.

* * *

 

She ended up liking Kaneki.

He made her feel less fucked-up. He loved books, and seemed to have something of a hobby tutoring people from remedial reading classes. Sometimes he brought a little girl from the remedial classes home to study with them, and eventually they were joined by a hulking brute of a guy. Hinami and Banjou, they were called.

What she liked best, though, was that they could talk about the other world and all their experiences with fairies. Each time they did, she could feel something inside her breathe, one more tight metal wire uncoiling from around her lungs. She never spoke of Yoriko, though. Somewhere in her mind she knew that since fairies existed, Yoriko likely had as well, but she managed to ruthlessly smother that idea.

However, it was Kaneki who convinced her Yoriko actually existed, even though Touka had never breathed a word about her. She went behind the foster home one day to find him turned away, speaking quietly and bashfully to a figure of light. That wasn’t unusual itself, but the moment the figure turned to her and locked eyes, everything she’d shoved deep inside herself flooded back like water bursting through a dam.

“Touka!” Yoriko looked so happy, “Touka I made it back!”

“You know each other?” Kaneki asked, comically shocked.

Touka didn’t know how to respond for a moment. Then, she stooped down, picked up a loose brick, and flung it wordlessly in Yoriko’s direction. Kaneki yelped and jumped away. It passed right through Yoriko, though, leaving only her shocked, transparent face.

“Touka?”

Touka felt her teeth grit so hard they creaked. “Took you long enough,” she said, “Where the fuck were you anyway?”

Yoriko stood there dumbstruck, mouth hanging open. “I… I couldn’t see your world for a while,” she said, eyes darting, “It just vanished to me and I don’t know why. I thought it was over. I thought I’d never—oh no, please don’t cry!”

“I’m not,” Touka shouted, eyes stinging. “Shut up.”

She wanted to scream. Yoriko had broken her promise, hadn’t she? She’d left and Touka had been alone for four years. But then she looked into Yoriko’s eyes and everything she’d had built up over the last four years crumbled, betrayed by a stupid sliver of childhood faith.

“Just don’t come back,” she said, “I don’t want you around.”

And with that, she ran away. She would’ve left it like that, never seeing Yoriko again for the rest of her life. Kaneki’s the one who interfered, running after her and putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, “Can you tell me what that was about?”

She brushed his hand off. “Can you go fuck yourself?”

He sighed. “Touka, I don’t know what’s going on, but that girl is as close to crying as I’ve ever seen a spirit. Maybe you should go talk to her.”

He couldn’t possibly understand. She thought of telling him so, but instead she waited, catching her breath and letting herself seethe a moment. Then, without warning, the rage flattened, leaving her dull and empty with only a tiny ember of resentment underneath it all. So she nodded at Kaneki and made her way back wearily.

Yoriko flew toward her, then stopped, eyes flickering between hope and fear.

“Okay,” Touka said, “Okay. Let’s talk.”

* * *

 

Yoriko didn’t have much to elaborate on. She didn’t have any explanations for why she’d suddenly stopped being able to see humans—it wasn’t something she understood, she said. And Touka could accept that, even if something inside her told her it was a lie, that the real reason she’d left was because the other world was so much nicer and Yoriko had just gotten tired of boring, sad old human Touka.

“Will you forgive me?” Yoriko asked, voice wavering uncertainly.

Touka looked at her. The Yoriko she remembered was luminous, ethereal, beautiful. The one she saw in front of her was pale, and washed out, like a bright pink shirt that lost its color in the wash. Had she changed so much, or had she always been this?

Touka felt the anger from before, and she thought of saying no. But then, she suddenly realized that if she looked into Yoriko’s eyes and rejected her, Touka would break herself along with her. Instead, a wave of exhaustion swept over her. She didn’t have the energy to hold a grudge now.

“Sure,” she said, “I can do that.”

She didn’t want Yoriko to leave again, but it wouldn’t be like it was when they were kids. Yoriko wasn’t her angel anymore: she was someone who’d left. Touka had other people now, too. She had Hinami, Koma and Irimi, Banjou, Yoshimura, and that idiot Kaneki. She didn’t need a guardian angel.

Her heart was empty on the nights Yoriko appeared in her room, but she let her appear and babble like she had before. It wasn’t the same for Yoriko now, either, Touka noticed. Yoriko talked faster. Her voice was shriller, more desperate, and her eyes were pleading. Always pleading for more forgiveness, for more time.

“So you really like that Kaneki guy, huh?” she asked one night.

“A little, I guess.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” she teased lightly.

“Shut up.”

They were both fifteen. Their eighteenth birthdays were three years away. Touka decided that she didn’t have enough time left to be mad at Yoriko.

* * *

 

“It’s not something you can understand.”

Those were words she’d repeated enough to be sick of—specifically to Yoriko. The more Yoriko stuck around, the more risk there was of her seeing Touka break someone’s face or get in other trouble. And she did, eventually. The night after was a flurry of pained, blubbering demands for explanations about why Touka did this and that—why she hit people who threatened her, why she broke things, why, why, why she was the person she was. It was the first tirade like that, but not the last.

“You were never like that before,” Yoriko said, voice high and a little hysterical, “You said you’d never hit someone who didn’t attack first.”

“Well I was an idiot then,” Touka snapped back, “If you wait for someone to move first, that’s all it takes to end up it in the hospital. Because then they get the first chance to cripple you. Just piss off about it, okay?”

Then, when Yoriko looked like a kicked puppy, “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

But that was a lie; she did mean it. How could Yoriko act so indignant when she’d never had to fight for her life? How could she act like she had the moral high ground when she didn’t even know what it was like to be that afraid? It was annoying, it pissed Touka off, and no, she didn’t sound sorry. Still, she tried to fake it, badly, “It’s just not something you understand.”

The criticisms were frequent for a while, and then Yoriko suddenly seemed to decide to ignore her dubious actions in favor of acting like the way she was before.

“Can you read this for me?” she’d ask, flailing her hands at a book. It was a picture book, _The Gift of the Magi,_ one she remembered reading to Yoriko once as a kid.

She shook her head. “I think Kaneki would like to do that more.”

“But I want it to be you!” Yoriko whined playfully.

“Okay, well, maybe some other time.”

Enough turned-down requests and offers later, and Touka could see weariness permanently enter Yoriko’s posture. But Touka couldn’t bring herself to feel too sorry. She couldn’t sit around anymore and read picture books and watch kids’ movies. She had work, school, and a million people pissing her off every day. She could only half-listen to Yoriko’s talks now, no longer interested in the fairy world or how it worked.

“You’re annoyed with me, aren’t you? I bore you now.”

Yoriko asked with a laugh, but the genuine insecurity under it was as transparent as Yoriko herself.

“No, I’m not,” Touka lied. “I like listening to your stuff just as much as I used to.”

Yoriko paused. “Would you still like to come to my world?”

“What?” Touka asked, frowning, “I wanted that?”

Yoriko twitched. “You don’t remember? It’s just—you used to seem, well, interested and stuff… and you said you wished you’d been born there once…”

“Oh. Huh, I remember that,” Touka said, “Well. No, I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to change anything about myself.”

She didn’t know why, but Yoriko’s face fell. Touka sighed, trying not to let any of her frustration seep into her tone.

“I don’t think the way you live would have any meaning for me,” she said, “That’s all. I mean, not being able to touch people? Not eating, even if you never get hungry? Never feeling any pain? It would be like living in a rich kid’s nursery your entire life, pointless.”

Yoriko looked profoundly sad. “So pain is what gives things meaning?”

“Well, no… that’s just how I feel. It’s a human thing, I guess. I’m not saying your world is dumb or anything. But I don’t think I could be happy in it.”

Yoriko opened her mouth to say something. Touka sighed again her tone definitely letting irritation out, cutting Yoriko off.

“It’s not something you can understand.”

* * *

 

She fell in love with Kaneki when she was sixteen, the same year he vanished and came back someone else, someone brutal and violent. She didn’t understand why—didn’t even try. The moment she got to talk to him, she screamed at him to never come back. As if that would somehow free her from the weight that hung over her since he left. As if she could somehow convince herself that she didn’t need him or anyone—that she was okay with being left behind one more time.

Yoshimura adopted her officially that year, ensuring she’d never have to leave to a shittier foster home. He and everyone else swarmed around her, trying to console her. Yoriko’s offer was the one that stuck with her, though.

“He’s gone,” Touka mumbled one night, “Just like Ayato and dad.”

“I’m sorry…” Yoriko murmured. Then, more quietly, “… would you like to see Ayato again?”

It was like electricity shot through her. “You know where he is?”

“No but… I think I could find out. There are ways… I found you, after all.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” she snapped viciously, “I could have seen him by now!”

Yoriko’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I’ll go do that.”

Yoriko did find Ayato for her, but when they met again Ayato kicked her, faking indifference for about five seconds before escalating into the most pathetic and rage-filled breakdown she’d ever seen.

“Why didn’t you find me sooner?!” he screamed, “If you cared why didn’t you find a way to come to me?!”

He said a lot of crap, but that was the bit that stuck with her as she limped home. That, and how he’d told her to never come back.

Yoriko reached out for the bruises on her face once she came back to the foster home, pain written over her face. Yoriko’s fingers didn’t manage to create even the shadow of a touch on Touka’s skin, but Touka drew comfort from them anyway. Touka told her everything, somehow managing to stop any tears from falling.

“I’m so sorry,” Yoriko whispered, “I wish it hadn’t turned out like this.”

Touka sighed and closed her eyes. “He’s… it doesn’t matter. I can’t actually say he’s wrong, huh?” She shifted, “I wasn’t there for years, so how could I just expect to…”

She trailed off, opening her eyes to look at Yoriko instead. Yoriko looked away.

* * *

 

When she was seventeen, Kaneki was still gone and Touka sat under a cherry blossom tree one moonlit night and admitted to Yoriko that she’d fallen in love with him. It was only a few weeks before her eighteenth birthday.

“But I don’t feel that way now,” she said, turning her cheek against the grass “He’s just… another memory.”

“I think he loved you too,” Yoriko told her quietly.

Touka laughed. “Love me? Yeah right. No one could love me.”

Yoriko was very quiet. “That’s not true.”

“Actually, yeah, it is,” Touka said coolly, “It’s just life in this world. This isn’t your fairy utopia, Yoriko. Not everyone here gets to be loved and kept safe.”

She didn’t even flinch as she said it. It wasn’t a painful truth anymore. It was just a fact, as apparent to her as gravity, the weight that Touka felt on her back and knees every day. Once you’d realized the truth of things like that, you could walk forward and life got a lot easier to live. It was just one more thing on the painful road of acceptance.

“It must be nice, though,” she murmured, “To be loved.”

She closed her eyes, and let the soft breeze and the fluttering of cherry blossoms sink into her ear. When Yoriko spoke, she could hardly hear it over her own breathing.

“Touka…”

“Hm?”

“Touka,” Yoriko’s voice was stronger. “Touka. _I_ love you.”

That made Touka’s heart catch a moment. Her eyes opened to see Yoriko’s face creased, eyes earnest and a little desperate. Still, she dismissed it. “That’s not the sort of thing I meant.”

Yoriko’s eyes hardened and she lifted her chin. “What do you mean? I love you like you loved him.”

Touka shifted uncomfortable. “Yoriko…”

“I wanted… I still want to be with you forever,” she said, smiling as her voice got a little shrill and airy, “I’ve wanted that since we were kids… You’re so beautiful, Touka. You’re the most beautiful person in both worlds—I’m sure of it. I…” she faltered, “I wanted to see if there was a way you could become like me, so I could bring you over to my world and let you meet my family and friends there… There is a way. That’s what I found out in my time away. I was always searching for a way, even then. And… and… there is. The witch, Eto. She can—”

Touka didn’t know what her face looked like, but it made Yoriko stop, her smile wavering for a moment. “I know you don’t feel the same way. That’s okay. But please don’t think no one could love you.”

Touka opened her mouth. She had nothing to say to that. Yoriko had turned away, refusing to look her in the eye.

“Yoriko I… you’re right, I don’t feel the same way.” She reached for words. “But thanks, I guess.”

Yoriko looked up and gave her a sad smile. Her face was transparent, faint getting more so with each day as Touka’s birthday approached. “I just wanted you to know.”

She supposed that Yoriko wanted her to feel loved, hearing that. She wished that she could, if only to make Yoriko happy. Somehow, though, she didn’t. Instead, her chest throbbed hollowly.

That night, she closed her eyes but lay awake, memories of Yoriko whispering to her in her first foster home one night. “I’ll be back,” she’d said that last night before disappearing for a few years, “But I have to go for a little while.” Touka could remember the day Yoriko had told her about how she’d lose her ability to see fairies forever once she turned eighteen. How unreal it had seemed then; so far away. Touka from back then would have fought it, would have believed she could stop it even if it meant breaking the laws of the universe, but not anymore.

Three weeks until Touka’s eighteenth birthday. Twenty one more days, and she’d lose Yoriko forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left. To be updated tomorrow!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: death, some brief gruesome imagery, sad lesbians
> 
> So here's the last chapter. I'm not happy with it. I think it's a bit overwrought--I'm a big, angsty angst writer who puts too much angst into things, in case you haven't noticed. Hopefully this isn't too bad? Ehhh, well I'll leave you to decide.

She loved them all. She loved Yoshimura, Koma, Irimi, Hinami, and Yomo. That was what she realized as she tossed and turned at night, mulling over Yoriko’s words about a witch who could bridge the gap between the worlds. Somehow love for them all had crept up on her, but now she wouldn’t let them go for anything. They were her family.

Yoriko’s offer still tugged at her heart, though, because Yoriko was family too, even if Touka feelings weren’t as strong as hers. The next few days, she noticed Yoriko skirting around, uncertain and regretful.

“I’m sorry,” Yoriko said finally. She was so faint that Touka could barely even see her in the pitch black of night.

“For what?”

“For everything. For leaving, for you being alone so long, for not being able to understand what you’re going through… for pushing my feelings on you, I guess.”

Touka shrugged. “We don’t have time for regrets. It’s only a few days until my birthday… we won’t be able to talk after that. So let’s just enjoy the time we have.”

They did. The night before Touka’s 18th birthday, they stayed up late. Yoriko kept talking fast, laughing a little too hard and over too many mundane things. Eventually they both quieted

“So you were looking for a way to bring me to your world… all because I dumbly said I wanted to be there,” Touka murmured.

“It wasn’t dumb,” Yoriko said, “But… yes. When you said that I thought—if I could just find a way.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“That was part of the… I mean, I wasn’t allowed to. By the witch. No telling until shortly before your eighteenth birthday. Even then… you didn’t like me as much as you did when we were kids. I was having a hard time bringing up the courage to tell you.”

Yoriko smiled, and Touka felt her eyes sting a little. “Why? I don’t hate you, y’know,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as scratchy as it felt, “That’s not why I don’t want to go. I _want_ to stay with you forever. Really,” she said, “But I have people here. You have family and friends over there, right?”

Yoriko smiled. Not a happy smile, either. “You know families there aren’t like what they are here…”

They lapsed into silence, but Touka stayed up. She had told herself she’d make every moment matter, but instead she found herself sleepy and bored. Nothing to do, nothing to talk about besides regrets and how things could have been better. Nothing to think about but the way she’d snapped at Yoriko that one time, and that other time, and again…

Still, she clung to each moment. She could have just gone to sleep and gotten it over with, but she held on. Maybe one more hour—one more minute could be all she needed to make herself live this friendship to the fullest. Maybe if she kept her eyes open for a few more seconds, she could wash away her regret.

“I’m so sorry Yoriko,” she said, “I’ve been an asshole, haven’t I?”

“No, no… don’t worry about it.”

She dreamt of a world where they held hands and ran together, a world with Ayato and her father and all the people from Anteiku.  When she woke up, Yoriko was gone.

* * *

 

She met the One-Eyed Witch, Eto, shortly afterward. It was the first time she’d met a witch, and she didn’t feel kindly toward them afterwards. Not that Eto did anything harmful, but the vibes she gave off were enough for Touka to swear off any connection to magic forever.

“You are owed one favor,” she said, “It was supposed to be granted to you on your 18th birthday. You may use it now at any time you choose.”

“Okay,” she said, “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

Behind her bandages, the witch smiled poisonously. Touka could see it. “I can’t make you believe anything.”

“Aren’t favors supposed to be in return for something?”

“Yes, and aren’t you lucky? Usually a favor like this would cost you years of indentured servitude, but someone already paid for yours. Just remember,” she said, “I can’t bring the dead back to life, and if you want to be able to see your fairy friend, the only way now that you’re old is to become a fairy yourself. Don’t think you can have the best of both worlds. So then, what do you want?”

Touka narrowed her eyes, wondering how the witch knew about Yoriko and then deciding it was probably best if she didn’t know. “I’ll think about it,” she said, not intending to ever see the tiny woman again.

“Very well,” the tiny person tittered, “When you have decided, call my name three times, and I’ll appear.”

* * *

 

It wasn’t long after that that everyone abandoned her. Yoshimura—everyone. They left her forever. Kaneki—

The worst of it was Kaneki had come back, and said not even a single word to her before running off to die.

Maybe that was unfair of her to think. It wasn’t entirely their fault that some old enemy from Yoshimura’s yakuza days decided to get some belated payback by slaughtering everyone he knew. It was entirely their fault for dying, though. Yomo had said something about Yoshimura, Koma, and Irimi protecting her. She didn’t give a flying fuck. They chose to die. They had to be heroes when they could have _stayed_ with her. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck—!

She collapsed in the hideout—the sewers that Yomo had shoved her into—and wept herself to sleep. When she woke up, she stumbled back. That was a mistake, because she saw them.

Irimi with her head cut off. Koma skewered. Hinami twisted lifelessly on the ground. Kaneki’s eyes gouged out.

She ran, and ran, and ran.

* * *

 

She found herself wandering in the direction of the city she knew her brother lived in, where his gang hung out. Then, she stopped herself.

Was she really that desperate, ready to crawl back to someone who’d beaten and rejected her? Just because he was the last person in this world she knew?

She sat a moment on sidewalk, and wept, suddenly feeling like there was a million pounds on her shoulders. She stank and her teeth, her body reeked of sweat, and her teeth festered, not having been brushed for days.

“ _Yoriko,”_ she mutter to herself.

Yoriko was still out there somewhere, alive. Yoriko, who had said she loved her. Yoriko, whose birthday hadn’t come yet, she knew, so she could still see everything if she’d lingered to watch over Touka the last few days.

“Are you watching?” she mumbled, “Can you still see me?”

Of course there was no answer. Touka let herself rest for a moment, let the last few tears she had fall. Then she stood up, wiping her eyes. She knew what to do.

She gave one last thought to her brother, wondering if this would be abandoning him yet again. Then, she remembered the bruises she’d taken, his gang, and his last words telling her never to come back. How futile it would be, now, to wait around for someone to become less shitty in the hopes that they still wanted her around? So she made her choice.

“Eto,” she mumbled, “Eto, Eto, Eto!”

Suddenly the city was gone. She was in the witch’s lair, a place that wavered in and out of her eyesight much like the misty fairy gatherings Yoriko had pointed out to her as a child. The witch was there, sitting above her on what looked like a stack of books.

“So you’ve made your choice?” the witch asked, resting her chin on her hands.

It was a leap. It was a huge leap, but she didn’t know what else she had left.

“I want to go to Yoriko’s world,” she said, “I don’t want to be human anymore. Everyone’s gone, so I might as well live with the only person left that I care about.”

“What about the meaning pain brings?” the witch asked, as though she somehow know Touka’s old words and was throwing them at her, “What about the ability to fight for yourself, that you loved so much. What about touching? Or family?”

“I’ve had enough _meaning_ to last my entire life,” she spat back, “Why shouldn’t I live without pain for the rest of it? And I’m sick of fighting… sick of hurting people. The rest—I’ll adapt. I can learn to live another way.”

She really hated the giggle the witch let out at that. “Very well. You can become one of the fae. I’ll ask you one more time. Is that really what you want?”

“Just shut up and do it.”

The witch’s magic was dark and disorienting. Touka saw one eye glow from within the black sockets of her bandaged face. Then, Touka felt her flesh melt away bit by bit, leaving only her voice to scream.

“Safe journey, young one,” the witch’s voice carried after her.

* * *

 

She didn’t know what she had expected, but it hadn’t been to wake up alone.

Everything about the other world was different. The sensations were lighter, less concrete. The colors were ones she’d never seen before. There weren’t houses or buildings the way she was used to, but there was architecture, projections of light and magic that enveloped people and sheltered them in shapes nothing like the pragmatic domiciles. When she reached out for things, she found she couldn’t really touch them he way she was used to. Still, they left some sort of impression on her, sweet and intangible as Yoriko herself.

Yoriko—that was the problem. Yoriko was nowhere to be seen. The damn witch hadn’t bothered to drop her off where her friend was. She might be on the other side of the world, for all she knew.

“Yoriko,” she asked, her voice strangely wavering like the few times she’d heard it underwater. “Yoriko, where are you?!”

She ran around, calling the name until other fairies started to look at her strangely. She didn’t care. Yoriko was here. Yoriko could be her friend again. They could talk and dance and now Touka could dance and fly with her. She could learn to navigate this new, strange world without any edges or harsh things to grab onto. She could learn to live without pain.

“Excuse me,” Touka asked the nearest person she could find, “Do you know where Yoriko is? I need to find her.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

That was the first response, and the response of everyone after that. No one knew Yoriko. No one knew where she was. Touka’s entire being tightened with anxiety with each new stranger who shook their heads and looked at her pityingly.

She had to travel farther and farther, crossing glowing terrain and what constituted for nature in the world. She had to learn to move: flying was a tricky business and her grasp on the process was about as firm as her grasp on wet soap. She had to ask millions of strangers, nearly despairing and cursing everything’s as a witch’s foul trick before someone finally widened their eyes at her question.

“Yoriko Kosaka?” they said, “Isn’t that the girl who left to join the human world a little while ago?”

Touka stared, feeling nothing.

“Yes, I heard she made a deal with a witch!” they said, “It’s big talk in the town it happened in.”

Touka didn’t know if she actually screamed, but every particle in her new body shriveled and let out the shriek for her. She found herself crumpled on the ground, something that was barely possible for the weightless fairy body she’d acquired.

“Hey, are you okay?” the person asked. “Did you know her?”

She almost wished she could rip them apart. But she couldn’t, not in this strange, bubbly world. Instead she felt her rage and disbelief bleed out of her, seeping into the area around her. The child withdrew.

“Show me,” she hissed, wishing she could grab the person by the collar. “The village. Show me where. Now!”

* * *

 

Touka hissed. Eto looked down at her, the bandages dangling from her bare face, one eye gleaming red.

“You’ve been causing a lot of trouble, you know,” Eto said lightly, “Practically tearing up your new home and the people around you will all those dark feelings. Do you know how many fae have asked me to get rid of you?”

“You filthy piece of shit,” Touka said, “You knew—you knew she’d already left.”

“Yes,” Eto said, voice light but not more mocking than it normally was, “She’d earned a wish for herself too, after all.”

Touka said nothing, trying to puzzle this out. Eto seemed amused.

“Oh come now,” she laughed, “You figured out that your friend is the one who paid for your wish, right? She’d thought to come to me, to earn a wish for you so you could wish yourself over here—and one for herself so she could wish your brother over here with you. The price was years of service, during which time she couldn’t see you or any of her friends, and she wouldn’t be able to tell you until the month before your eighteenth birthday. Then, the wishes would become available. Things didn’t work out the way she wanted, but she decided she wouldn’t leave you alone, so she used hers.”

Touka blinked. “So she…”

Yoriko had seen the slaughter of Touka’s new family before her 18th birthday, and wished herself over to help her. She was there now, alone, probably afraid, with no idea how to survive. Touka wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. The new body she had wouldn’t let her.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Eto said.

Touka reeled. “You tricked us.”

Eto shrugged. “Not in the least. You didn’t particularly want to be with her, did you? That wasn’t your wish.”

Touka froze.

“You wanted an escape, a way not to suffer pain and loneliness. Any person could have done the job. She was your last choice for it, in fact, so don’t waste time acting like she was more important to you than she was. Get over yourself, go back into the world, and find a new companions. Then you can fulfill your wish.”

“You…” she was still reeling, “I’ll kill you. I’ll really kill you.”

“No, you won’t,” the witch laughed. “And you’ll never get back to that world. We’ve talked enough now.”

And with that, the witch vanished.

* * *

 

It was supposed to be a world without pain, yet Touka had never felt worse. She struggled, stumbling forward in the world like a bird with an injured wing. The deaths she’d scene played again and again before her eyes: Yoshimura, who’d stayed up and helped her with homework even when his eyes were going out. Irimi, who had put an arm around her shoulder and yanked her away when she’d been ready to get into a fight. Koma, who yammered on about his old gang days. Kaneki, who she’d loved for his gentle and considerate nature, who looked at her with sympathetic eyes and told her without telling her that she was going to be okay.

Dead, dead, dead. Head cut off, burned, eyes like black holes. The images stayed, recycling, refusing to go away.

Her presence was poison in this world for it. She radiated hate, anger, fear, loneliness—feelings and memories of such intensity that the people of that world wanted to avoid. They shut her out, turned away, shunned her. It turned out there were ways to destroy in this soft world, ways to rip up the terrain, if not with her physical hands. She did it with her mere presence, with the undying nightmares that burned behind her eyes.

She was a menace here, a monster. It was all she knew how to be.

Eto had said she’d never make it back. She could never see Yoriko again. She was alone for good.

And yet…

And yet, one day, she woke up with the phantom of tears on her lashes, a strange burning in her chest. She thought she had felt Yoriko in a dream like the one she’d had on her eighteenth birthday. A ghostly feeling of a hand entwining hers and a soft touch on her cheek lingered on her skin.

It hurt.

“It’s like the gift of the magi, Yoriko,” she mumbled aloud, not caring that Yoriko wasn’t actually there, “I always hated that fucking story.”

Suddenly, in her mind’s eyes, the ghost of Yoriko smiling at her comment was as strong as any reality. It brought everything flooding back to her—everything _good_. Her father. Her brother. Yoriko. Their outings. The way Yoriko flipped carelessly in the air. The times she’d cried to her. Her abandonment. The foster homes. Yoshimura. Koma. Irimi. Yomo. Kaneki. Hinami. Yoriko again— _Yoriko._

“You never were going to leave me alone, huh?” she mumbled, “You were going to follow me—you did. You came over. You gave up all this… everything you were used to.”

Under the cherry blossom tree, Yoriko had said something. _Please don’t think no one could love you._ Touka had never managed to speak her feelings for Kaneki out loud. The thought of doing that used to crowd her heart with fear. But Yoriko hadn’t held back—she’d thrown herself out there, not caring for reciprocation but just hoping that Touka could feel loved.

The thought overtook her like a spasm of pain. She laughed into the ground, until she choked and it turned into something else entirely. She couldn’t cry tears, but somehow she could sob.

What she was feeling now—she recognized it. She’d felt it before, in little bursts when she’d been a child with Yoriko, and then once more with Kaneki.

“Yoriko, I actually love you,” she said, “I’m such an idiot. I love you. I love you.”

It hurt. She was alone again. But somehow—for the first time in years, she felt another strange feeling. It was the feeling she should have felt a while ago, when she’d sat with Yoriko under the cherry tree. She hadn’t believed it then. She couldn’t make herself believe it. But Yoriko had wanted her to, had thrown everything away to try and make that one feeling reach her.

She felt loved.

* * *

 

Ultimately, that was all she needed.

It would take years. It would take so many years of her tearing apart everything she could, exploring everything, _learning._ She’d have to throw away all she thought she knew and claw her way through the fabric of reality to get what she needed. But that didn’t matter. She was unbreakable, and the world was wide and full of mysteries that could prove a cackling witch wrong.

And one day, she would (she _did_ ) feel solid ground underneath her feet again, and weight pulling at her shoulders: gravity. Then would be a whole new set of obstacles: searching, accounts, papers, tiny traces a person left behind simply by living in the human world. Then, she would run until her lungs were ready to give in and her legs were ready to come apart.

She would (she _did_ ) see a woman, a woman with her shoulders bent from years of work and her arms thick from kneading bread and stirring pots. A woman who had learned to live in this world. A woman who’d learned to cook even when she could barely read because she had once dreamed of feeding the hungry, of bringing a smile to the face of someone she loved.

“Hey, I’m—”

Their eyes would meet, and after that, everything would still be broken, but they take that and make it okay.

Because then there wouldn’t be that chasm between them. They would be able to understand each other, instead of trying to from separate worlds. They could learn to walk under the weight of living and get meaning from something besides pain. Then they could hold each other and entwine their fingers; they could feel each other’s lips on their own, and hold each other tight as they kissed.

(And they did.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... There you go. Happy ending. :) I hope that was satisfying, even if it all happened rather abruptly. I wanted to write a happy ending for once. This is the first one I've written.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read and commented thus far! Please feel free to leave more comments! Fanfic writers may not die from a lack of comments, but it's still encouraging to get them. Also, as usual, I'm always open to criticism.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my tumblr at kammy-keets.tumblr.com, and if you haven't heard of it already, check out tgladyappreciationweek.tumblr.com!


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